Murder mystery book that has only been solved 4 times in almost 100 years
While many of us are still scratching our heads over the finer details of Glass Onion, there’s a murder mystery book that featured in the film that’s been solved just four times in almost 100 years.
Some of us are born detectives when it comes to murder mystery parties or a game of Cluedo, while other people crumble at the first sign of a puzzle.
Anyone who’s seen Glass Onion – Rian Johnson’s follow-up to the brilliant Knives Out – will know that Benoit Blanc loves a mystery to solve, this time jetting off to Greece to lend his expertise to a game that turns deadly.
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Following the format of your classic whodunnit, the film is filled with incredible details that serve as breadcrumbs for us to follow. Breadcrumbs that inevitably get completely ignored by the average viewer, of course.
In one scene we see Blanc soaking in the tub surrounded by books and papers strewn across the bathroom floor.
One of these titles, it turns out (as flagged by an eagle-eyed Reddit user), is Cain’s Jawbone, a murder mystery first published in 1930, with all its pages printed out of order.
The 100-page book was written by Edward Powys Mathers, the father of the cryptic crossword, and was released in a way that initially appears completely nonsensical – unless you’re willing to wade through to work it out, of course.
At the time, he wrote: “The pages have been printed in an entirely haphazard and incorrect order, a fact which reflects little credit on somebody.
“The author assures his readers, however, that while it is now too late for him to remedy the ordering of the pages, it is quite possible for them, should they care to take the trouble, to re-order them correctly for themselves.”
According to the Washington Post, the mystery has been solved just four times since it came out, with one person commenting on the thread to say it became a ‘big Pandemic thing’ for a while as people tried to pass the time.
Page 38 says: “I stabbed once, and even as I did so, I thought of skinny old Marat in his slipper bath, the nightcap about his forehead, the dim light of the candle, the shadow at the door, the stealthy tread of Charlotte Brontë with the undulled blade.”
While page 93 reads: “Had not the author of Wails of a Tayside Inn said of them that they were the living poems and that all the rest were dead?”
“Had not the singer of Wimpole Street said that they were binding up their hearts away from breaking with a cerement of the grave?”
In 2020, British comedy writer John Finnemore became the third person of all time to solve the literary puzzle, with the Guardian reporting at the time that it has ‘32m possible combinations’.
Publisher Unbound had offered a £1,000 prize to anyone who could solve it within a year, with Finnemore ending up as the only one to manage the feat out of 12 entrants.
He described the book as ‘far and away the most difficult puzzle’ he had ever attempted, adding: “The first time I opened the box, I swiftly concluded that it was way out of my league, and the only way I’d even have a shot at it was if I were for some bizarre reason trapped in my own home for months on end, with nowhere to go and no one to see.
"Unfortunately, the universe heard me.”
Reckon you’ve got it in you?
Topics: Film and TV, Crime
Jess Hardiman